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Amid a sharp spike in COVID cases despite high levels of vaccination in the country, the island nation of Bahrain has started giving Pfizer-BioNTech booster shots to vulnerable residents who had taken the full vaccine of the state-owned Chinese drug maker Sinopharm.
Bahrain has fully vaccinated 47 percent of its people, more than the 41 percent vaccination rate in the US or the 38 percent in the UK. In India, however, only about 4.7 percent of the country’s 950 million adult population have been given both doses, Al Jazeera reported.
However, Dr al Manea added that since residents above the age of 50, are obese or have chronic illnesses, they are now being urged to get another shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, six months after the full Sinopharm vaccination.
The reason Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is being recommended for more vulnerable groups is:
An outbreak nearly five times more lethal than India’s, the daily COVID-19 deaths in Bahrain have risen to 12 per million people in recent weeks.
Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago of 115 islands became the world’s most vaccinated nation with 65 percent of the population fully vaccinated, due to donations of the Sinopharm vaccine from the UAE and of an AstraZeneca PLC shot by India.
However, Seychelles too, saw cases and deaths surge to records in May. Though, the WHO pointed out that most of the cases were either unvaccinated or had only received their first dose, the Seychelles health ministry said it is considering administering a third booster shot to vulnerable residents.
In its initial report on Phase 3 trials of Sinopharm, the UAE government said in December that the vaccine offered 86 percent protection against symptomatic disease and 100 percent protection against moderate and serious disease.
However, according to dozens of recipients in Dubai, the emirate’s health authorities have also begun revaccinating with Pfizer-BioNTech those residents who had been fully inoculated with Sinopharm, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte are among several national leaders to have publicly taken the Sinopharm shot. Several nations are building vaccine plants to manufacture Sinopharm locally.
However, while the government’s BeAware app allows users to book a Sinopharm booster shot, it recommends the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for more vulnerable population groups.
(With inputs from Al Jazeera and The Wall Street Journal)
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